Ursula's Secret

by Mairi Wilson

  For my parents, for sharing their love of reading.

  Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.

  Attributed to Buddha

  Acknowledgements

  The first draft of Ursula’s Secret won the Sunday Mail Fiction Prize 2015. For the opportunity to be published, and for their tremendous vote of confidence, my sincerest thanks to the judges: Sunday Mail writer Heather Greenaway, author Daniela Sacerdoti, Waterstones Scottish books buyer Angie Crawford and Alison McBride, marketing director of Black & White Publishing. My thanks too to the rest of the team at Black & White Publishing, and in particular editor Karyn Millar for guiding me expertly through my first foray into this new world and helping make this book the best it can be.

  Thanks also to all who’ve helped me along the way from the birth of the idea in a short story to its final expression here. They are many, but for timely words of wisdom at Moniack Mhor, my thanks to Isla Dewar and Morag Joss; to Sophie Cooke, Director at Skriva Writing School, for sustained encouragement and always asking me the right questions; and to my writers’ group, Marianne Paget, Emily Dodd and Louise Kelly, for empathy, honesty and humour. To Anne and the team at Casa Ana in Spain, thank you for taking the chores of everyday life away from me while I finished the first draft. Look what happened. I’ll be back.

  Finally, special mention to the friends and family who encourage me, listen to me, put up with me. You know who you are. I am so grateful and don’t say it often enough, so here it is, in print: thank you.

  Contents

  Title

  Dedication

  Quote

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Aftermath

  Copyright

  1

  Edinburgh, June 3rd 2014

  Lexy heard the taxi pull away behind her. She’d over-tipped in an attempt to make up for the driver’s lost chance at a better fare from one of the other passengers off the London train, but it hadn’t worked. The driver had scowled at her as he’d pocketed her money and muttered something she couldn’t catch under his breath, although the words daft wee lassie had featured in there somewhere. Not an auspicious start to what she knew would be a tough few days going through a dead woman’s affairs.

  The building towered above her, solid and city-stained. Number 17 didn’t look familiar to her, or any different to all the other tenements that lined the short street, but as soon as she turned the key in the panelled front door and felt the chill of the hallway she was bombarded with memories. A fusty dampness mingled with the tang of bleach from cleaned flagstones. A waft of cut grass drifted in through the open arch leading to the garden. The swoosh and thud of the heavy door swinging shut behind her silenced the hum of distant traffic as abruptly as the click of the off switch on a radio. She bit her lip and stood shivering in gloomy half-light, marooned for a moment in the past.

  She knew what she would see when she looked up beyond the spiralling stairs to the glass dome in the ceiling: dust peppering the shafts of coloured light splaying down on her. She had stood here before, small hand in her mother’s strong one. She could picture Ursula’s face beaming down from a long way above as she called them to come on up. How daunting those stairs had seemed to a child who lived in a bungalow. Up and up and up, never-endingly. She’d pulled back, reluctant, shaking her head.

  “But look, Lex. The stairs are smiling to welcome us.” Her mother bent down and whispered in her ear. “Let’s smile back, shall we? Show them we’re happy to be here?”

  So Lexy had, and she did it again now as she realised the “smile” was just the curve that years of trudging footsteps like their own had worn into the lip of each step.

  The stairs were worth it, though, even if Lexy was breathing heavily by the time she reached Ursula’s top-floor flat. She paused on the threshold, basking in the light flooding the generous hallway from the sitting room’s bay windows. In the distance, she could see the green expanse of the Meadows. Smoke hovered like mist over grass sprinkled with groups of lingering students, exams over, barbecues dying, end-of-year celebrations already in their twilight stages. Smudges of pink and lilac bruised a cloudless sky. Breathtaking, surprising and immediately soothing. Easy to see why Ursula had stayed on long after she’d retired, although for a woman of nearly ninety those stairs must have been a challenge: her fall no real surprise, whatever police protocols might suggest.

  Feeling like an intruder, Lexy left her case and bag by the door and stepped further into the hallway. All the rooms opened off this and all their doors were ajar. She pushed open one to her left and looked into a large L-shaped kitchen, a dining table and benches built into the alcove at the far end, in front of the window. She had a view of the Meadows from here too, albeit obliquely and without the glow of the evening sun. The padded window seat behind the table was piled with cushions, a perfect spot to linger in the morning with the papers and cups of tea. Did she really remember her mother sitting there or was it just the kind of thing Isobel liked to do?

  The room was tidy, a single plate propped against a mug left to drain on the rack beside the sink, alongside an upturned vase, its thistles and leaves glazed in blues and greens. Lexy recognised it instantly: there was one just like it in her mother’s hallway. Had Ursula always left things in such an orderly state or had someone been in to clean since she’d died, thrown out fading flowers, brushed away crumbs, rinsed dishes?

  A pile of post on the end of the worktop decided it. But who would it have been? Police? Someone from the solicitor’s office? Or perhaps social services did that kind of thing. It would be nice to think so, but she doubted it.

  Her phone bleeped as she walked back into the hallway. Text message. Another one. She should answer, but she’d no idea what she’d say. She glanced at her bag, then turned away.

  She opened the door to her right and a surge of nostalgia swept through her. Twin beds with matching pink candlewick bedspreads, a small nightstand and lamp, a dark wardrobe flush against the wall by the door, and an old-fashioned dressing table in the corner near the window, itself screened by net. The curtains fluttered, and as Lexy walked over to close the window, she grew larger in each of the three mirrored panels above the dressing table. The glass gleamed.

  She pulled the stool from its nook, traced the roses of its tapestry seat with her fingertips.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” Ursula’s voice was clear. “Your mother did it, for my birthday one year.” Lexy heard pride, love, in the soft lilt, felt the warmth that had always been there whenever Ursula told her tales of Isobel’s childhood.

  Watching her reflection in the mirrors, Lexy hooked a leg over the stool and sat down. There she was, eight years old, lips streaked in red, powder-blue smudges on her eyelids. Her mother appeared at her shoulder, then Ursula behind her, and for a moment Lexy watched all three of them laughing togeth
er, smelt eau de cologne, wrinkled her nose at the antiseptic edge of coal tar soap. Then the breeze through the curtains cooled her cheek and the illusion dissolved.

  She pushed open the next door and paused, hand resting on the cool porcelain doorknob. Ursula’s room. Chintz wallpaper and fifties furniture. This had been forbidden territory to her as a child and even now she was reluctant to go in. She was dreading the prospect of trawling through the remnants of Ursula’s life, and above all in here. This would be the greatest intrusion of all, unpicking the intimate details of a private Ursula Lexy had never known. Tomorrow would be time enough.

  And then the final bedroom. That was the one that made Lexy’s throat constrict, her breathing stall. It was a young girl’s room. Her room when they’d visited, the one where her mother had lived out her own childhood, dreamt teenage dreams. Lexy ran her hand along the books stacked neatly on top of the chest of drawers, the bookcase itself crammed full, books jammed in horizontally between tight rows of upright volumes and the shelf above. Lexy read as avidly as her mother had ever done, had spent hours of their visits curled up on this bed, devouring stories with the same curiosity, the same thirst for adventure and make-believe.

  Ursula had changed nothing in here as far as Lexy could see. She sat down on the bed and smoothed the paisley-patterned eiderdown to either side of her. It felt cool and silky, tiny pinpricks of feathers just apparent through its surface. Slipping her feet from her shoes, she swung her legs up and round and lay back. Eyes closed and she was a child again, listening to the sound of her mother and Ursula chatting in the sitting room at the end of the hall, or chinking dishes as they washed up in the kitchen opposite. Sometimes they’d forget to whisper and she’d hear them talking, making plans for the next day, discussing something they’d already done.

  “The zoo,” her mother’s voice had stated clearly that last time they’d visited. “She’s been penguin-mad ever since you introduced her to Pingu.”

  “Has she?” Ursula had sounded pleased. “Right. That’s it then. A trip to the zoo on your final day. My treat.” A kitchen cupboard door had banged shut. “We’ll keep it secret and surprise her.” Footsteps in the hallway drowned her mother’s response as the women moved through to the sitting room.

  Lexy turned onto her side, drew her knees up and rested her hands under her cheek as she let the memories return. Hours spent tucked between her mother and Ursula watching the same videos over and over; squeals and shrieks as the three of them, at Lexy’s insistence, waddled or slid up and down the polished wood in the hallway; penguin-speak conversations in the igloo they’d built her under the kitchen table. But, now that she thought about it, they’d never gone to the zoo. That was the trip that had ended early, when they’d taken the sleeper home, and that had been excitement enough to put even penguins in the shade. Until now. They’d been happy, the three of them. What had changed that? Why had the visits stopped?

  Lexy woke to the sound of a key turning in the front door. She lay rigid, disorientated, eyes registering 8.31 on the alarm clock. Morning. She’d slept straight through.

  Hinges creaked.

  She scrambled to her feet, cold despite the sun streaming though the uncovered window. Her stomach growled, but no time for that. She struggled to wake, to grasp that she wasn’t alone. A thud, then a grunt. Someone tripping over the suitcase she’d left in the hall. Adrenalin crackled like cellophane.

  “Hello? Who’s there? Hello?”

  She pulled at the bedroom door, shrank back at the stranger’s hand reaching out to push it open. “What the—”

  “Jeez – who the hell are you?” The stranger’s hand dropped. “I … I mean … Sorry. I’m Jenny. Ursula’s help, Miss Reid’s, that is. Her … her carer …” The hand shot up again, extended in introduction now as the woman recovered herself, stretched a smile on her face. “Right. Yes. I’m the carer. Jenny. How do you— Oh, you’ll be Isobel, won’t you?”

  Instinctively, Lexy took the outstretched hand, shaking her head as she tried to keep up. “No, I’m Lexy. Lexy Shaw. Isobel’s my—”

  “Oh, Lexy. Yes, your mother. I know. Ursula talks … talked about you all the time.”

  “She did?”

  “Well, no. But a lot. Enough.” The stranger rubbed her shin. “Jeepers, that hurt. What’s in that case – concrete?”

  “I … Just some … Sorry, who did you say you were?”

  “Jenny. I’ll make tea, shall I? I’ve brought the milk.” She vanished into the kitchen. Lexy heard a bag clunk onto the worktop, then running water and the clatter of a kettle lid before the woman reappeared, shrugging off her jacket. “Or there’s coffee. Not that she drank it herself, but you know how she was. Kept it for visitors. Rare enough those, though, these days.” The jacket was flung onto a coat hook and Jenny disappeared into the kitchen again. “So what’s it to be?” she called over clinking crockery, clearly at home in Ursula’s kitchen and leaving Lexy feeling wrong-footed. It would have been nice to know someone else had a key.

  “Tea. Tea’s fine, thanks.” Lexy followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table, relaxing a little when Jenny produced a packet of biscuits. No one armed with chocolate-chip cookies could mean any harm.

  “May I? Haven’t eaten.” Lexy was already opening them.

  “Oh, but there’s plenty of food in the cupboards, yet. And the freezer. Did you not look?”

  Lexy shook her head. “Too tired,” she explained between bites. “Fell asleep.” Watching Jenny bustle around the kitchen, Lexy realised they were closer in age than she’d thought, first impressions thrown off-kilter by speech tics and mannerisms she associated with an older generation.

  “Well, you will be needing to look at this lot, Lexy.” The pile of post slapped down on the table. “Not opened anything, of course, although I’d usually read everything for her. Almost blind she was at the end there, with the cataracts. Told her she should pull a few strings, what with her background, get herself moved up that waiting list, but she’d have none of it. She always was a stickler for the rules, wasn’t she?”

  “I don’t … I couldn’t really say.” Jenny probably meant well, and maybe Ursula had been glad of the chatter, but Lexy found it irritating and wished she could think of a polite way to get the woman to stop. Or at least slow down a bit.

  “Well, you’d not seen her for a good long while, though, had you,” Jenny was saying, “nor had your mother neither.” Jenny’s sniff was eloquent disapproval. “But she was, you know, a great one for rules. And standards. Oh yes, even at her age she’d not let anything slide. ‘Slippery slope, Jenny,’ she’d say, ‘slippery slope …’ ”

  The barrage slowed and Lexy took her chance.

  “Look, I arrived last night. The solicitor gave me the key. I didn’t know about you or—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Jenny was revved up and racing away again. “I’ve been half-expecting someone ever since … the accident. Thought it’d be your mother, though, as she’d been planning … Is she coming later, then, Isobel?”

  “No.”

  “Really? Well.” Another sniff. “I know they’d had their differences … but all the same, this was your mother’s home, and now they were speaking again … Still, her business, I suppose.”

  “My mother … she’s …” Jenny’s words caught up with Lexy. “They spoke?”

  “Of course they did. Closest thing to mother and daughter, weren’t they now, and wouldn’t you call your mother sometimes even if you did have a wee fall-out now and then?” Jenny reached down for a biscuit and crammed it whole into her mouth, giving Lexy a few precious seconds to try to work out what she was hearing.

  “But … when? What did … My mother never said …”

  Jenny brushed crumbs from her chest, swallowed, then carried on as if Lexy hadn’t spoken as she poured freshly boiled water into the teapot. “I always knew when your mother’d phoned. Ursula was brighter, sharper, you know, and when Isobel said she’d visit�
�”

  “What?”

  “Beside herself, she was. Years since she’d seen her, she said. She hoped Izzie’d bring you, too, let her see the woman you’d become for real, not just in photos.”

  “Photos?”

  “She kept them all. Boxes of them there in the press by the fireplace. We’d go through them on a rainy—”

  “My mother sent photos?” Lexy lowered her biscuit. “And she was coming here? When … Why?”

  “Well, you’ll have to ask her that, won’t you now, Lexy? But surely she’s told you? It was to be next week, after all. It’s there on the calendar.” Jenny waved in the direction of the wall beside the door with one hand as she passed Lexy her tea with the other. Three days were circled in thick blue ink. “Which is why,” Jenny continued, cradling her own steaming mug and sliding into the bench opposite Lexy, “I thought you’d be her. Ursula had me spring-clean the guest room and I’ve been keeping it aired and fresh ever since. Then you go and sleep in the other—”

  “Jenny.” Lexy, out of patience, cut across the other woman’s prattle. “Jenny, my mother’s dead.”

  After Jenny had gone, Lexy wandered around the flat, listening to the carriage clock ticking away the seconds until she had to leave to get to her appointment with Ursula’s solicitor. She’d showered and changed her clothes, even put on some make-up for the first time since her mother’s funeral. But still time yawned ahead of her.

  She couldn’t settle. This was Ursula’s flat, not hers, whatever the lawyers might say, and it didn’t feel right being there alone. As if she were trespassing in a life she had no right to explore. But she’d have to eventually. She’d have to empty the flat to sell it, go through Ursula’s possessions, dismantle her life. Jenny had offered to help as she was leaving, but Lexy had been reticent, politely non-committal, not sure why, except perhaps she couldn’t face the endless chatter that would come with the assistance. Jenny’s questions, judgements; Lexy’s own doubts.